(Author’s Note: I wrote this
review before listening to Eli Roth’s commentary on the film. I
feel that Roth does not understand his own movie, and his belief that
this is a movie about cheating rather than rape horrifies me. That
said, I decided not to update my review, because my feelings are
still mostly sincere.)
Knock Knock is
a film that makes me happy for my lack of star ratings. It's a film
that needs to exist, and tries to exist in the most boundary-pushing
manner that our culture will allow. That does not make the viewing
of this film a pleasant experience. Furthermore, it says a lot that
even a director as sick as Eli Roth was unable to get through this
entire movie without coping out.
This is a movie
about rape. Let's get that out of the way upfront. Our main
character, Evan (Keanu Reeves), is both physically tortured, and
sexually violated by two women for sick thrills. I'm glad that this
is a subject that can, for the most part, be taken seriously in this
movie. That said, I really want to know why this movie is labeled as
an “Erotic Thriller.” I don't know what anyone could find to
turn them on in this movie, past perhaps the first half hour.
The movie is set in
the kind of idyllic family life that absolutely no one can relate to.
Evan is a wealthy architect, married to a successful artist (Ignacia
Allamand), with two children (Dan and Megan Baily, who I assume are
siblings in real life, but can find no confirmation of that). They
live in a large, gorgeous home, and the closest thing to conflict in
Evan's life is going without sex for the last few weeks because of
their busy schedules.
Evan, in a tragic
irony, has to stay home and work while his family goes on a Father's
Day vacation. That night two girls named Genesis and Bell (Lorenzo
Izzo and Ana de Armas) show up on his doorstep, soaked from the rain
and claiming to be lost. Evan, being a gentleman, agrees to let them
come and until he can call them a car.
Credit to the movie
for not projecting the girls as evil upfront. Their introduction
comes across as innocent fun. They ask to throw their clothes in the
dryer, and Evan is decent enough to provide them with robes. They
put on some music, dance, and wish our hero a happy Father's Day, but
Evan is careful to maintain his boundaries.
The turn comes when
the girls lure Evan into the bathroom, and make an explicit effort to
seduce him. The scene is one of several points in the film where I'm
not sure how Roth intends for us to interpret Evan. Evan tells them
“no” repeatedly, and only gives in when they begin sucking him
off without his consent.
The next morning
the girls completely change their tones. They vary between hostility
and seductiveness apparently based on nothing more than what they
think will annoy Evan the most. When Evan threatens to call the
police, the girls claim to be fifteen, and threaten him with
statutory rape charges. Eventually, after they've made a mess of his
kitchen, and drawn on his wife's statue, Evan drives the girls to a
suburb they claim as their home, and leaves them.
Of course, the
girls break into his home again, knock him out, and tie him up. The
remainder of the film is variations of torture and build-up. The
girls repeatedly accuse Evan of being a cheater, a bad father, and a
pedophile. There are two sequences that I think are worthy of
specific commenting.
Firstly, there's a
far more explicit rape scene, which is actually quite hard to watch.
Bel puts on Evan's daughter's school uniform, and forces Evan to have
sex with her in it while she calls him Daddy and apparently relives
her own molestation by her father. Not only is Evan tied to the bed,
but the girls force him to be an active participant by threatening to
show his children video if he doesn’t go along with it. This
particularly sequence is really the heart of the movie, putting on
display just how sick these women are, and how utterly victimized
Evan is.
The other sequence
I need to comment on is notable for the opposite reason: how quickly
it seems to be forgotten. Karen's assistant, Louis (Aaron Burns)
comes over to pick up a statue. He's able to see through the girl's
act, and finds Evan tied up, but for some reason decides to fight
with the girls over their attempts to destroy a statue, rather than
freeing Evan and calling the police. The idiot dies when Genesis
steals his asthma inhaler, and he falls over and hits his head trying
to get it back. The girls dispose of his body, and his presence in
the movie is forgotten.
This is a major
flaw, as it's the only time in the film that the girls actually cause
a death. It puts them well beyond the point of sympathy, but somehow
the movie continues to play with the idea that they're somehow
“punishing” Evan for giving into them. In fact, the ending seems
to make this idea explicit, completely forgetting that the girls
committed a murder.
Specifically, the
film ends when the girls getting tired of their games, and leaving
Evan buried up to his neck in the back yard, a video of him having
sex with Bel now on Facebook, and his wife coming home to find the
house trashed. The scene plays almost like a raunchy comedy, rather
than the truly disturbing film it's been until this point. The final
line of the film is Evan's son saying “Daddy had a party.”
This
stands in stark contrast to the original, now deleted ending,
available on the DVD. Never have I seen such a blatant example of a
film chickening out. In the original version, the movie closes when
Evan knocks on the door of Bel and Genesis' next victim. The
implication is clear: while we won't be shown it, a gender flipped I
Spit On Your Grave is about to
take place.
But, apparently
Hollywood's fear of showing a man as justified in hurting women is
truly unbreakable. Instead, we're left with a mostly positive film
that ends with a truly out-of-place joke. Are we really supposed to
assume that Evan's wife will blame him for being raped? Even
accepting that the first encounter was cheating, there's no evidence
of that left. Apparently we're just supposed to accept that an
erection is consent.
I
don't want to comment on whether or not I recommend the film. My
feelings are so mixed that saying yes or no to that question seems
like missing the point. I definitely want to see the movie Death
Game, which was the basis of
this movie, at some point. I'm curious how the 70s might have dealt
with this concept differently.
